From Brian Lockhart, CT Post:
It is taking far longer than initially stated, but John Guedes’ plan to renovate the shuttered downtown Holiday Inn into market-rate apartments is nearing completion, and the aim is to have tenants start to move in this summer.
“We’ve had some setbacks,” Guedes acknowledged in a recent interview. “We’re about 75 percent there.”
About six of the eight residential upper floors containing over 70 units–there will be 94 total–are finished and, Guedes said, he is finalizing a deal with an operator to re-open the ground floor restaurant/lounge/catering facility.
Occupancy could begin by July once the appropriate municipal sign-offs are obtained.
The local developer purchased Bridgeport’s only major hotel in early February 2022 for $6.5 million, after previous owners the Trefz family shut it down in January. They blamed the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on the hospitality sector, although Guedes and others observed that business at the facility, which had been built in 1986, had already been suffering.
Full story here.
How was the affordable housing clause bypassed?
That’s where the juicy stuff is.
OIB readers learned long ago that Friday news releases often hide important details.
It’s been rumored that Joe G and crew are considering adding another bridge to Bridgeport’s portfolio in order to to help Ampitheater visitors commute easier out of town to their hotel and a wider selection of restaurants to after a concert.
I don’t know how losing the city’s only hotel under the Ganim regime, could be seen as a success for Bridgeport.
Joe ; the truth of the matter is that Joe G running on his “accomplishments” is a gift to any serious candidate hoping to unseat him. After occupying both Bridgeport City Halls for 20 years, he has only TAXPAYER-FINANCED/ TAXPAYER-SUPPORTED projects to show for his “efforts” — and they are failed projects at that! What happened to the ballpark and Bluefish? And how has the arena turned things around for downtown?! How many millions did taxpayers pay for those failed albatrosses to rise from the ashes of the once vaunted Jenkins Valves and Lionel Train factories?! And how much — annually, for how many years — have taxpayers shelled out to keep any operations on that site from outright death (the ballpark did die, so another $12 million in our tax dollars was shelled out to finance another highly-subsidized, contraindicated, political-vanity operation…)?! And how much $ have taxpayers realized from the neighborhood-displacing centerpiece of Bridgeport redevelopment at Steal Point? There are quite a few million in red ink outstanding in regard to the latter…
But a lot of tax-negative, workforce housing for Stamford has been built in Bridgeport under G1 and G2 — and even though that has allowed a burgeoning, voting-age Bridgeport population to expand in the state’s largest city, we haven’t seen our political clout increase in Hartford. How is that?! Where is our 125th GA seat?! Why haven’t we sought to relocate that back to our growing population when all indications are that it should be relocated back here?! Where is Joe G on this essential aspect of his advocacy for our city?!
But grocery stores have been built — and have closed(!), as have restaurants(!) — making way for yet more workforce housing for Stamford and dorm space for the neighborhood-devouring SHU monster…
So; if we add up all of the net, tax-INCOME value of all of the development during the Ganim years, we have a huge well of red ink — one that serves as an eerie companion to the huge Blue hole in our police force….
Any serious mayoral candidate should be able to use Joe’s REAL RECORD as a $1 million campaign donation — and any serious mayoral candidate will have a plan of development and tax-base expansion that can be used as a matching $1 million donation to the that.
So far, none of the candidates in the race are showing that they are serious or that they have a clue, even while Joe G is busy pulling rabbit after rabbit (the same one, of course!) out of his hat. (And Joe G still has time to run a successful real estate enterprise while he runs the city and runs for mayor… How is that!)
If odds were being offered by the legal gaming industry on the 2023 Bridgeport mayor’s race, at this point in time, I would be putting $ on Joe G to win — with absolutely lopsided odds, I would think… The rest of the pack had better get a clue before the primary… The clock is ticking fast…